WHY is Windmill Lane in Kempsey so called?

On the face of it, because it was once the site of a wind-driven structure for milling flour, though you'd be forgiven for finding it difficult to readily confirm this fact.

The truth is that a windmill did, indeed, exist in this location for no fewer than 800 years, though the sturdy structure was pulled down 126 years ago and is obviously a landmark well out of anyone's living memory.

Fortunately, however, a superb photograph of the Kempsey windmill still survives, and such is the atmospheric beauty and rarity of the historic scene that it's one of the prized images in the photography collection of London's renowned Victoria & Albert Museum.

The photograph, as artistic as any Victorian landscape painting, was taken almost 150 years ago by one of the nation's earliest pioneer photographers, Benjamin Brecknell Turner.

It is believed he captured the Kempsey windmill on camera sometime between 1852 and 1854, making the rare image almost a century-and-a-half old!

Martin Barnes, the Victoria & Albert Museum's assistant curator of photographs, says it must certainly be the "earliest photograph" taken at Kempsey.

I learned of its existence from a chance meeting in Worcester recently with Ron Sears, whose comparatively modern bungalow home stands on the site of the Kempsey windmill.

He and wife Jess have lived in Windmill Lane, for 46 years and had a surprise visitor a few months ago, when Martin Barnes knocked on their door.

He had come up from London, in search of the site of the Kempsey windmill, featured in a valued collection of Benjamin Brecknell Turner photographs which he cares for at the V & A.

Martin clearly identified the Sears' home and garden as having been the site for which he was searching. Looking at the 1850s photograph, we can see, on the right, a substantial Victorian cottage which still exists though it has since been extended and converted into two homes - those of the Sears' neighbours, Brian and Cheryl Ballard, and Bill and Doreen Wood-Honey.

Martin Barnes was carrying out research for a book he was compiling. Entitled Rural England Through a Victorian Lens - Benjamin Brecknell Turner, it is to be published next month by V & A Publications, price £30. Other Worcestershire villages featured in the Benjamin Turner collection are Earls Croome, Clerkenleap and Bredicot.

An exhibition to accompany the book is to be mounted at the V &A from Thursday, April 5, to Sunday, July 29, and will then go for display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

When visiting Kempsey, Martin Barnes was also delighted to be shown a millstone in the garden of Gill Hollis, on the opposite side of Windmill Lane from the Sears. He believes it's the original millstone from the Kempsey windmill and is the one seen in the 1850s photograph, propped up near the entrance doorway!

There is evidence too, that a long section of the wall around Gill Hollis's garden may well have been constructed of bricks salvaged from the windmill when it was demolished in 1875.

Gill Hollis's late parents, Mac and Marjorie Hollis kept The Blue Bell pub at Callow End, for some years.

Judging from the adjacent cottage in the 1850s photograph, the main body of the Kempsey windmill must have been large and imposing, standing about 40 to 50ft high. Martin Barnes suggests there would have been a windmill at Kempsey as far back as the 12th Century.

Ron Sears has been a builder based in Kempsey, for many years. He followed in the footsteps of his late father, Frank Sears, who was also a builder in the village for much of his life.

Ron's mother, Mrs Flo Sears still lives at Kempsey and was featured in Memory Lane some months ago, principally in relation to her father, Ernie Watts, who kept a hardware and general stores in Friar Street, Worcester, for about 40 years in the middle of the last century.

Ron and Jess Sears' bungalow in Windmill Lane commands magnificent rear views across the Kempsey Hams and the River Severn to Callow End, Powick, the Old Hills, the Malverns, Clee Hill and the Ankerdine Hills.